Next, lift out those pesky drip pans and shake them into the sink or into a garbage bag to get rid of any loose gunk. This is the easy part! Use a stiff brush to loosen the gross stuff if needed.

Step Two: Spray down the stove drip pans. You’ll be surprised at just how much gunk a strong stream of water can remove on its own. It helps if your faucet has a powerful spray so you can blast the gunk away.

If the stuff caked on your drip pans is almost, but not quite loose after you spray it down, you might soak it for ten minutes or so just to make more headway before moving on to the next step.

Strong Water Spray Will Remove and Loosen Burnt Remnants

🧽 Making the Homemade Cleaning Paste

Step Three: Combine dish soap and baking soda in a 1:1 ratio in a small bowl. Mix the ingredients for your homemade cleaning paste together until it creates a frosting-like consistency with a slightly foamy texture. Here’s what you should see when you have everything all mixed up.

Dish Soap and Baking Soda

Step Four: Apply the mixture to your drip pans. This is a great time to be generous. When I say generous, I mean slather it on. Don’t be shy about this.

Next, give it all a scrub down for a few seconds to loosen things up. Work the cleaning solution into all that grease really well.

I scrubbed for 30 seconds or so on the ones that were in especially bad shape. Don’t be afraid to use a stiff brush or scrubby sponge if you need to. And work those elbows.

Add a generous amount of the homemade cleaning paste to each burner and scrub it in.

⏳ Let the Stove Burners Soak

Step Five: Transfer the drip pans to Ziploc bags so they’re out of the way and aren’t messing up your counters. Let them sit for an hour or more soaking in the cleaning paste you made.

Let the Burner Pans Soak in Ziplock Bags for at Least Four Hours

If you don’t want to waste the expensive Ziplock bags on this, just use the plastic bags from the grocery store. I had some Ziplocks I had used for freezing meals that would have been thrown out, so it made for an easy choice.

📍 While You Are At It – Clean Underneath the Stovetop

There’s no better time than now to lift up that “hood” and clean the area under your stovetop. You might have to fiddle with the release mechanism to figure out how to lift the stovetop up.

Sometimes they just lift straight up. Sometimes, the top might just be stuck from excess gunk so you have to pull hard or spray the crack with your favorite all-purpose cleaner and let it soak for a minute. Trust me, we’ve moved into more than one house where that was the case.

Sometimes, there is a release mechanism along the front lip of the stovetop, or along the edge of the part where the control panel is. Every brand is different so if you can’t figure it out a quick google search of your make and model instruction manual should help.

Most electric stovetops have some way to pull the cooktop up and get to the stuff that falls down in. Again, a little soap and water does the job just fine. No harsh chemicals are necessary.

Don’t forget to clean under the stovetop while you are at it.

🧽 Finish Cleaning Your Drip Pans

Step Six: Once you’ve waited at least thirty minutes, remove the soaking drip pans from those bags and scrub away. I didn’t get a picture of this step, but here’s the result.

My electric stove drip pans look so much better now!

I’m happy with the results. They aren’t in like-new condition but don’t you agree that the after looks much better than the before? Huge improvement in my eyes, and I didn’t have to use Ammonia and kill brain cells to clean my burner pans and make a tremendous improvement.

If you’re looking for an easy and natural method for cleaning your drip pans, I highly recommend you give this a try.